I have to admit, I was a little excited a few days ago when I spotted the “Your Pottermore account is ready! Step this way…” email in my inbox. I had all sorts of questions, all kinds of things I was curious about. What kind of content did J. K. Rowling include in Pottermore? What’s excluded? How do you navigate the chapters? What will Olivanders be like? Does the Sorting Hat actually sing? I could go on and on. I was eager to get started.

Nokia, a Finnish-based company, has come up with a patent to prevent people from ever missing another ping from their phone. Sometimes your phone can be in the other room, on silent, or you might just be too distracted to notice it through your pocket. The way Nokia suggests you may be able to do this is through a tattoo. The magnetic ink will vibrate along with your phone to ensure you note your phone is calling to you.

I’m not a Potter-head. Let’s start things off by making that very clear. I do enjoy watching the films from time to time, lately in knitted envy more than anything else. I’ve read up to halfway through book five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. My friends and I did make up paper magic wands for when we saw the last film, but that’s about the maximum geekery I’ve indulged in with Harry Potter.

Have you ever wondered what the actual plural of octopus is? The answer? It depends. Don’t you hate that? Sometimes it is just too much to ask for a simple answer. English has never prided itself on its simplicity, and since English has been affected by many other languages as well, nothing is simple anymore.

Like this:

In this newest installment about the personal libraries of TSTC Publishing staff, Publisher Mark Long shares his thoughts about reading, books, and related ephemera.

One my many bookshelves at work full of publishing-related titles.

Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.”

The original impetus in creating the first edition of Taking Charge: Your Education, Your Career, Your Life in 2008 was to produce a college success guide that directly linked college success skills to both professional and personal development. That’s especially important with the increasing trend of community and technical college students entering the workforce upon graduation as opposed to immediately moving on to a four-year college. To that end, the writing and research skills of the co-authors, Karen Mitchell Smith and Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, proved to be invaluable through the first two editions of this book.

Since that first edition, however, feedback solicited from instructors around the country combined with advances in digital publishing has resulted in a dramatically revamped third edition to be published in September 2012.